Quote

Talk of mysteries! — Think of our life in nature, — daily to be shown matter, to come in contact with it, — rocks, trees, wind on our cheeks! The solid earth! The actual world! The common sense! Contact! Contact! Who are we? Where are we?

Henry David Thoreau

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Henry David Thoreau
Age: 44 †
Born: 1817
Born: July 12
Died: 1862
Died: May 6
Abolitionist
Author
Autobiographer
Diarist
Ecologist
Environmentalist
Essayist
Naturalist
Philosopher
Poet
Translator
Writer
birthplace of Henry David Thoreau
Thoreau
Henry D. Thoreau
World
Sense
Contact
Nature
Daily
Earth
Rocks
Mysteries
Come
Mystery
Cheeks
Matter
Wind
Solid
Think
Tree
Shown
Thinking
Talk
Actual
Life
Common
Trees

More quotes by Henry David Thoreau

Image
I wish to learn what life has to teach, and not, when I come to die, discover that I have not truly lived.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
be yourself- not your idea of what you think somebody else's idea of yourself should be.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
Indeed, the life of cattle, like that of many men, is but a sort of locomotiveness they move a side at a time, and man, by his machinery, is meeting the horse and the ox half-way.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
A broad margin of leisure is as beautiful in a man's life as in a book. Haste makes waste, no less in life than in housekeeping. Keep the time, observe the hours of the universe, not of the cars.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
What are men celebrating? They are all on a committee of arrangements, and hourly expect a speech from somebody. God is only the president of the day, and Webster is his orator.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
I wish to speak a word for Nature, for absolute Freedom and Wildness, as contrasted with a Freedom and Culture merely civil, - to regard man as an inhabitant, or a part and parcel of Nature, rather than a member of society.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
Books are for the most part willfully and hastily written, as parts of a system to supply a want real or imagined.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
After all the field of battle possesses many advantages over the drawing-room. There at least is no room for pretension or excessive ceremony, no shaking of hands or rubbing of noses, which make one doubt your sincerity, but hearty as well as hard hand-play. It at least exhibits one of the faces of humanity, the former only a mask.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
I begin to see an object when I cease to understand it.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
A man might well pray that he may not taboo or curse any portion of nature by being buried in it.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
All that is told of the sea has a fabulous sound to an inhabitant of the land and all its products have a certain fabulous quality, as if they belonged to another planet.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
And so the seasons went rolling on into summer, as one rambles into higher and higher grass.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
Dwell as near as possible to the channel in which your life flows.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
One should be always on the trail of one's own deepest nature. For it is the fearless living out of your own essential nature that connects you to the Divine.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
The fire is the main comfort of the camp, whether in summer or winter, and is about as ample at one season as at another. It is as well for cheerfulness as for warmth and dryness.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
As the skies appear to a man, so is his mind. Some see only clouds there some, prodigies and portents some rarely look up at all their heads, like the brutes,' are directed toward Earth. Some behold there serenity, purity, beauty ineffable. The world runs to see the panorama, when there is a panorama in the sky which few go to see.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
To say that God has given a man many and great talents frequently means that he has brought his heavens down within reach of his hands.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
It is not for a man to put himself in such an attitude to society, but to maintain himself in whatever attitude he find himself through obedience to the laws of his being, which will never be one of opposition to a just government, if he should chance to meet with such.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
If you would be chaste, you must be temperate.
Henry David Thoreau